Dudley Moore was filled with such self hatred that he contemplated suicide despite his silver screen success, a diary by the late actor has revealed.

The handwritten memoir, shown to the Daily Mail by Moore's friend Barbra Paskin, shows that the actor was desperately unhappy and obsessed with his apparent failure with women.

An entry from the 1968 document shows that on New Year's Eve Moore suffered one of his darkest moments. "I can no longer see any reason to live. For the first time I could say to myself, 'I want to kill myself'. I feel empty and dejected. I have no reason to do anything for anybody; not even for myself," it read.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Although Moore was writing at a time when his professional career was soaring, his frustration and depression are revealed in the document. His complex relationship with women is also displayed in its pages, with one entry reading: "I want to f**k Dominique Boschero [a French actress] - at least anything that looks like she does. Will I always have such ambitions and despise them: is that why I possibly despise women - they arouse feelings I despise."

Later that year, Moore married the first of his four wives, actress Suzy Kendall, and noted that, "Commitment to a woman feels like death". "I feel like I'm being killed by the people who love me," he wrote, later revealing that he fantasised about other women while making love to his wife.

Moore's complex relationship with Peter Cook, with whom he formed the popular TV double act, is also referred to in the memoir. The British actor announced in 1999 that he was suffering from the degenerative brain disorder, progressive supranuclear palsy, and died from pneumonia, secondary to immobility caused by the palsy, in 2002.